AROUND THE POLITICAL bubble of Leinster House James Reilly has cut an increasingly isolated figure in recent weeks and so it is little wonder there appears to be an air of inevitability about his departure from the Department of Health.
Last night, as he held court at the weekly meeting of Fine Gael parliamentarians, the party’s deputy leader is said to have been “contrite” about the medical card fiasco, while blaming Cabinet colleagues for not having the political will to solve the problem until after the voters had their say last month and gave the government a good wallop.
That electoral kick for Fine Gael – and a bloodbath for Labour – has spurred the coalition into action on an issue that has been dogging backbench TDs in constituency clinics up and down the country for well over a year as they dealt with people whose own or their children’s medical cards had been removed for no good reason.
Some within Fine Gael have now gone as far as to publicly say it’s time for Reilly to get out of health. In the Dáil yesterday, Michael Noonan was asked by Gerry Adams to express confidence in Reilly. He did not address the issue in his response.
The fact that the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Taoiseach have been closely scrutinising the management of health spending since the last Budget indicates that Reilly has to some degree lost the type of control most ministers have of their money.
Privately, there are even more Fine Gael and Labour deputies saying it’s time for Reilly to go as part of a wider and much more radical reshuffle than had been first mooted before the election. Many in Fine Gael see Transport Minister Leo Varadkar as the obvious successor.
Reilly has been under pressure for much of his time at the Department of Health.
He has been dealing with the various problems and legacies in the department itself as well as his own controversies around primary care centres and his embarrassing appearance in the Stubbs Gazette.
Consistent overruns in the health budget have dogged his ability to implement any meaningful reform and take the necessary steps towards free GP care and ultimately universal health insurance.
Last night’s exchequer returns showed a €144 million budget overrun in health for the first five months of the year and it’s only likely to get bigger.
While he has the support for the radical initiatives from his Labour colleagues – after all it was the junior coalition partner who first proposed a system of UHI some years ago – his junior minister Alex White has made no secret of wanting Reilly’s job.
While senior Labour figures will say privately that while they have no problems with the policies, they do have concerns about the minister.
All of which has overshadowed Reilly’s achievements in Hawkins House like cutting hospital waiting lists and the number of people waiting on trollies in Emergency Departments as well as the high-profile and popular war on tobacco.
While opposition calls for him to go date back as far as 2012, the fact that some within the government side and his own party are now openly calling for his replacement and there are far from any ringing endorsements from Cabinet colleagues indicates that it is now only a matter of time before Reilly’s spell at the Department of Health comes to an end.
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